Editorials - 21-05-2022

On the night of January 30 this year, Syed Ashrin Sulthana left home to marry Billipuram Nagaraju, the man she loved. Just over three months later, Nagaraju was killed by her relatives. Marri Ramu chronicles how a poignant inter-faith romance ended in tragedy

On the sultry evening of May 4, Nagaraju picked up his wife, Ashrin, from the house of his relative, Lingam, where he had dropped her in the afternoon. Waving goodbye to Lingam and promising to meet him soon, Nagaraju, a car showroom employee, rode his bike from Panjala Anil Kumar colony towards the couple’s rented home in the nearby Brindavan colony. That was the last time Lingam saw him.

The Kothapet-Victoria Memorial Home road in Saroornagar in Hyderabad was bustling at 8.45 p.m. Not too far from Panjala Anil Kumar colony, Nagaraju had to turn right to head home. On reaching the turn, he halted for a moment, waiting for the traffic to slow down.

Suddenly, two men riding a scooter intercepted the newly married couple. They jumped off their vehicle, rushed towards Nagaraju and Ashrin, and pushed them off the bike. Nagaraju’s helmet slipped off his head. One of the assailants hit him on the head with a steel rod. By the time Ashrin got up, the assailant had “hit Nagaraju’s head with the rod two to three times,” according to the First Information Report (FIR) issued by the Saroornagar police, filed on the complaint of Nagaraju’s relative, Talari Danaiah. The attacker then handed the rod to his associate, brandished a knife and tried to stab Nagaraju. Ashrin began screaming for help. “I pleaded with onlookers and passers-by with folded hands to save my husband, but no one responded,” she later said in interviews with the media.

As the knife somehow got bent, the first assailant again rushed towards Nagaraju, who was now lying motionless on the road, with the rod. Ashrin tried to block his way and hold his hands. She was in for a shock. “That is when I identified him as my elder brother Mobin,” she was quoted as saying by the police. As Ashrin resisted him, Syed Mobin Ahmed pushed her and repeatedly hit Nagaraju’s head with the rod, videos of the murder showed.

“I even pleaded with Mobin not to kill Nagaraju, saying I would return to the family with him, but he continued to attack Nagaraju,” Ashrin told the police.

Some bystanders tried to help the couple. Video clips in the public domain show one bystander throwing a helmet at the attackers and some hurling stones at them. “After confirming that Nagaraju was dead, Mobin and his acquaintance, identified as Ashrin’s elder sister’s husband, Mohammed Masood, fled the spot,” the complainant said.

Ashrin collapsed before Nagaraju’s body, crying inconsolably. The couple’s seven-year-old love story and 92-day-old inter-faith marriage had come to a gruesome, tragic end.

Within minutes, reports of “a Hindu being murdered by Muslims” spread. Some people staged a protest on the road demanding “justice for the victim’s family” and the “death penalty for the killers”. The police asked the protesters to leave and promised action as per the law.

The beginning and the end

Syed Ashrin Sulthana and Billipuram Nagaraju were students of the Government Junior College in Marpally in Vikarabad district, 90 km from Hyderabad. The village of nearly 2,000 homes has a mixed population of Hindus and Muslims. Nagaraju, 25, belonged to the Mala Scheduled Caste. He was the first of the two children of agricultural labourers Anasuya and Srinivas, who live in Ambedkar Colony.

Ashrin’s family earlier lived in Ghanapuram village, 8 km from Marpally. Ashrin’s father was a daily-wage earner; her mother is a homemaker. Apart from Mobin, the oldest among the siblings, Ashrin has two older sisters and one younger brother.

Ashrin and Nagaraju were friends in college; the friendship soon turned into romance. “We knew they were in love, but we were not sure if they would tie the knot since they belonged to different religions,” said Ramesh, Nagaraju’s senior and a close friend.

On completing the intermediate course, Nagaraju joined a mechanics course in an Industrial Training Institute in Hyderabad. Ashrin’s family also shifted to IDPL colony of Balanagar in Hyderabad city. She graduated from a private college and began working in the private sector. As her father was not keeping well, Mobin had to run the household. He began selling fruits on pushcartsand organised the marriage of two sisters with his meagre earnings.After their father passed away four years ago, Mobin began looking for a partner for Ashrin. He planned to get married after Ashrin’s nikah.

But Ashrin had decided to marry Nagaraju, and informed her family about it. Mobin made it clear that he disapproved. “But Nagaraj and I were determined to get married,” she told the media.

Ashrin repeatedly tried to persuade Mobin to agree to the marriage. “My brother is an aggressive man. He vehemently opposed the idea,” she said.

Realising that Mobin was not going to relent, Ashrin decided to leave home. On the night of January 30 this year, she left her mobile phone in the house before stepping out. She called Nagaraju from another person’s phone and met him at Miyapur, northwest of Hyderabad.

The next day, Nagaraju tied the knot with Ashrin in an Arya Samaj wedding, with Hindu rites. She changed her name to Pallavi. Hours later, she called an aunt and informed her that she had married Nagaraju.

On hearing the news, Mobin and his friends rushed to Marpally looking for his sister. The search was fruitless and Mobin returned to the city. He approached the Balanagar police to register a complaint about her disappearance. The police registered a case of missing person. Their analysis of Nagaraju’s mobile phone call detail record showed that he frequently phoned his friend Raju. The police summoned Raju for questioning. He told the Balanagar Inspector, Waheeduddin, that the couple had got legally married.

In the FIR too, the complainant, Danaiah, said that the couple feared they would get into trouble if they went to the Balanagar police station in whose jurisdiction Ashrin’s family lived. “On the night of January 30, Mobin beat up Ashrin when she had once again raised the subject of marrying Nagaraju. It seems like that compelled her to leave the house,” Waheeduddin said.

Unwilling to appear before the Balanagar police, the newly married couple met Vikarabad Superintendent of Police N. Koti Reddy at his office. They told him that they were both of marriageable age and had got married willingly. “They did not speak of any threat to their lives. As a precautionary measure, I directed the Mominpet Inspector to speak to the couple and their respective family heads,” Koti Reddy said.

The Mominpet police informed the Balanagar police probing the missing person case that the woman they were searching for had got married. “But Mobin insisted that he wanted to see his sister and confirm that she was safe. So, he and two family members were taken to the Mominpet police station on February 15,” Inspector Waheeduddin said.

The couple and Nagaraju’s family members were also asked to come there. In the presence of the police of Mominpet and Balanagar, members of both families met the couple in the police station.

“There were emotional outbursts from Mobin and his family, but Ashrin firmly said she wanted to be with her husband,” said police officers who were present there. Nagaraju and Ashrin gave written statements to the police reiterating that they had got married of their own free will. Mobin too gave a written statement that he had met his missing sister and had heard her version. Since no case could be made on Mobin’s complaint, the matter was closed.

Police officers maintained that they did not see any serious threat to Nagaraju’s life from Ashrin’s family then.

Nagaraju, however, had remained cautious. He did not disclose his whereabouts after he got married. Even his close friends from Marpally village were not sure where he and his wife lived. “In fact, many of us knew about his marriage only when the two families were summoned to Mominpet police station for counselling,” his friends said.

He may have wanted to remain private or he may have been worried about possible offensive moves by his in-laws, said a police officer of Rachakonda involved in the investigation. “He not only changed his mobile phone but secured a new SIM card. Apparently, he did not want to be tracked,” said the officer, on condition of anonymity.

A few days before he was murdered, Nagaraju told Ashrin that he spotted Masood, her brother-in-law, moving outside his workplace. Nagaraju worked in a car service centre in Malakpet. Ashrin did not see anything amiss in that. “Going by Masood’s earlier reaction to my marriage proposal, I did not foresee any danger from him,” Ashrin said.

She would later regret it. “Maybe Nagaraju would have been alive had Ashrin explored the possible motive behind Masood’s movements at his workplace,” said Nagaraju’s family members at Marpally.

Within hours of the murder, Mobin and Masood were caught by the police.

Ramadevi, Nagaraju’s younger sister who lives with her parents, was at a relative’s house in Ambedkar Colony, over 110 km from the murder spot, when she got a phone call from Ashrin. She rushed to Hyderabad with her parents. After the painful formalities of the autopsy, her distraught parents returned home. They laid their only son’s body to rest at a local graveyard. “All these years we lived fearlessly here. With my brother murdered, how can we be sure that someone will not emerge from the dark at night and assault us,” asked Ramadevi.

Tracing Nagaraju

Ashrin was perplexed by how Masood knew of Nagaraju’s whereabouts. “Interestingly, it is not Masood but Mobin who tracked Nagaraju,” said an interrogator who grilled the duo after nabbing them.

Mobin wanted to trace Nagaraju and take vengeance for marrying his sister. He spoke to Nagaraju’s acquaintances and tried to contact his friends. All these efforts yielded no results. Searches in areas where he thought the couple could be living were futile too.

But Mobin did not give up. He tried to trace Nagaraju’s mobile phone. Mobin, a high school graduate, is reportedly not tech-savvy. When he had lost an Android smartphone a couple of years ago, someone suggested that he use ‘Find My Device’, a Google app that helps locate lost, misplaced or stolen mobile phones. There are two ways of tracing a phone through the app: one, by keying in the person’s email id and two, their phone number. The officers, who toldAshrinnot to mention their names, informed her thatamong the possibilities they were investigating is that Mobin used the app to close in on her husband.

But how did Mobin trace Nagaraju if he had a new phone and SIM card, Ashrin asked the police officers who met her at Marpally.

The first way of tracing a phone location through the ‘Find My Device’ app is by entering the email id with which the Android phone was set up. The police said it is likely that Mobin, who did not have Nagaraju’s email id, typed out Nagaraju’s old phone number on the Truecaller app and got Nagaraju’s email id from there. Nagaraju, they believe, used the same email id to set up his new phone. It is crucial to note that the ‘Find My Device’ app helps a person track all the mobile phones set up with the same email id.

Once the email id is available, the next crucial piece of information that a tracker needs is the phone password. “It seems that Nagaraju used his old phone number as his password for his email. When Mobin randomly typed that number, the app showed Nagaraju’s phone location,” his family members were heard discussing at their home in Marpally.

Had Nagaraju set up his new phone with a different email id or changed his password, it would not have been possible for anyone to locate him through these apps.

During interrogation, Mobin reportedly admitted that he and Masood conducted a reconnaissance of Nagaraju’s workplace to attack him. The police are examining the footage of surveillance cameras in the vicinity of Nagaraju’s workplace to ascertain if Mobin and Masood really did a recce of the area with a plan to attack him. “It seems they initially wanted to kill him at his workplace, but changed the place as they anticipated resistance by the customers and employees there,” a senior police officer of Rachakonda said.

The motive

On the fateful night of May 4, Nagaraju started from his workplace around 8.15 p.m. in Malakpet to Lingam’s house to pick up his wife. Mobin and Masood followed him on their scooter. They turned on the app, said the officer of Rachakonda.

On reaching the colony, Nagaraju disappeared inside a lane. The attackers, who were following him and moving in the same direction on Kothapet main road, lost track of him for a while. But the app led them to the right spot and the couple and their attackers came face to face at the turn. Within minutes, Nagaraju was dead.

The Saroornagar police registered a case under Section 302 (murder) of the Indian Penal Code read with Section 34 (common intention), and Section 3(2) (v) of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. The Dalit youth’s murder had brought the issues of family or hate killings to the centre stage yet again.

G. Laxman, a retired university professor who is with the Civil Liberties Committee, refused to describe the murder as a consequence of an inter-faith marriage. “This is more a case of caste hatred. More than religion, it was the perception of feeling humiliated that a woman had married a Dalit that led to this,” he said. He recalled the murder of Pranay, by hired assassins, in 2018 in Nalgonda, 100 km from Hyderabad. The killers were allegedly hired by an upper caste Vysya businessman, Maruthi Rao, whose daughter, Amrutha, had married Pranay, a Dalit. Similarly, in 2020, the family members of Avanthi Reddy, who had married an interior designer belonging to the Vysya community, Hemanth, are alleged to have hired assassins to kill him in Hyderabad’s upscale Gachibowli area.

“Despite the uproar over Pranay’s murder, the State failed to initiate specific steps to check such murders in the name of honour. Can’t the government have helplines that can come to the rescue of youngsters marrying outside their caste or religion,” the retired professor asked. The government has failed to send out a clear message that such crimes would be dealt with severely, he said.

“The state should at least ensure that these cases are not dragged on for years together,” said Telangana High Court lawyer Raghunath Verose. Pranay’s murder trial is a classic example, he said. Amrutha was pregnant when hired assassins killed Pranay in front of her eyes. The child is three years and four months now. “Delayed justice in such crimes is one of the factors emboldening the killers,” Amrutha said. She hoped that the trial of the case will be over at least by the end of this year.

‘His family is my family now’

Political parties were quick to condemn Nagaraju’s murder. All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen president and Hyderabad Member of Parliament (MP) Asaduddin Owaisi said that marriage is a matter of choice and right, and murder is the worst crime in Islam. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said the murder showed intolerance towards a Hindu boy marrying a Muslim girl. Telangana BJP president and Karimnagar MP Bandi Sanjay sought to know why the “secularists” who had raised their voice against Pranay’s murder were not responding with equal vigour when a Muslim girl’s family members had murdered a Hindu. Former Indian Police Service officer and Bahujan Samaj Party Telangana president R.S. Praveen Kumar said he does not believe Nagaraju was killed only because he was a Dalit. Kumar believes Mobin was angry that his sister had dared to defy the family by marrying a person outside the religion.

Politicians, social activists and voluntary organisations have all been visiting Ashrin, who now lives with her in-laws in their small house in Ambedkar Nagar. Utensils, clothes and their whole world is contained in one room. The family uses a bathroom ‘constructed’ with old clothes wrapped around four wooden sticks. When asked if she will join her ageing mother now that Mobin is in prison, Ashrin said her late husband’s family is her family now. “My mother may need me, but Nagaraju’s family needs my support more,” she said.



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The impact of the changes on Indian policy will offer New Delhi a better understanding of future domestic challenges

In late 2016, a senior Indian government official, in a meeting with the envoy of a neighbouring country, spelt out the consequences that the country would face if it crossed the Narendra Modi government’s newly “muscular foreign policy”. At the time,the Government had put Pakistan on notice on terror attacks, and cancelled Foreign Secretary-level talks; in Sri Lanka, the Rajapaksa government, that had been seen cozying up to China was voted out, with some reports that Indian intelligence played a role in facilitating opposition talks; and in Nepal, Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli's coalition government had fallen apart, with a similar nudge reported from New Delhi.

The message the official conveyed was that New Delhi would use all its levers to prevail over any uncooperative South Asian neighbour. However, the tough messaging did not find much favour over time. By the Modi government’s second term, it had made peace with a much more consensual, conciliatory policy in the neighbourhood — visibly improving ties with each country (minus Pakistan) through high-level visits, extending development aid and lines of credit, and enabling a rush of soft power diplomacy.

A change in approach

The contrast between India’s response to the events in 2016 to the present is stark, after five neighbouring democracies underwent non-electoral changes at the top, namely Myanmar, Nepal, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The first difference is that New Delhi has not been held responsible in any of its neighbouring capitals for attempting to interfere in their political processes. Second, South Block has abandoned its uniformly muscular “one size fits all” approach to the region.

While in Myanmar, the Modi government continued engagement and even strengthened ties with the military junta that overthrew the government led by Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy, in Afghanistan it severed ties with the Taliban that took power in Kabul by force after Afghan President Ashraf Ghani left the country. In Nepal where Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba came to power after the Supreme Court dismissed K.P. Oli, and Sri Lanka, where public protests forced Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa to resign and President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to appoint rival and Opposition leader Ranil Wickremesinghe as the new Prime Minister, New Delhi has been largely supportive of the processes. Whereas in Pakistan, it has virtually ignored the swearing-in of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif after Imran Khan lost the vote of confidence.

People more than leaders

A second lesson that seems to have been learnt is that New Delhi’s messaging now is focused on people in the neighbourhood rather than just those in power. In Afghanistan, for example, the Modi government spent months in careful negotiation with Pakistani officials to ensure it could send 50,000 MT of wheat meant for the Afghan people, despite the fact that it has no diplomatic engagement with either Islamabad or Kabul otherwise. In Sri Lanka, a Ministry of External Affairs statement said that India would “always be guided by the best interests of the people of Sri Lanka expressed through democratic processes”, a subtle pitch both to the people and to democratic processes in the region. A third lesson is perhaps the toning down of rhetoric on domestic issues in the neighbourhood — the Government’s public reaction to Durga Pooja violence against Bangladesh’s Hindu minority last year was much more nuanced than its messaging during the push ahead for the Citizenship (Amendment) Act in 2019. Some have even suggested that the continued delay in framing rules for the CAA since then has more to do with concern for ties with Dhaka than with the COVID-19 pandemic.

A neutral position will not do

There are, however, other lessons that New Delhi must learn from the regime changes in the neighbourhood, and some of them apply to the Indian context as well. This is after all, the Indian subcontinent, set in the Indian Ocean, and what happens here cannot leave India untouched. Therefore, a silent or “neutral” position cannot mark the Modi government’s response to the changes in the way it has with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or China’s moves in Hong Kong or the South China Sea region. India faces the direct impact of almost every South Asian country in crisis, in terms of the need for aid and loans or a possible influx of refugees, as movements that develop in one neighbouring country are often mirrored in another. Therefore, they must be watched more closely.

The first lesson to be learnt is that populism does not pay in the long run. While the potent combination of hyper-nationalism, religious majoritarianism, and a strident anti-elitism can bring “men of the masses” such as Mahinda Rajapaksa, K.P. Oli, and Imran Khan to power (as they promise an alternative to corrupt, dynasti regimes), it does not necessarily keep them there. It is a mistake for any government to conflate an electoral win and a mandate for governance with acarte blanche for ruling a country.

The second is that the popularity of a leader can decline sharply and suddenly for one or a combination of reasons: K.P. Oli won a landslide victory in 2017 where his Left Alliance secured majorities in both houses, and formed governments in six of seven provinces; Imran Khan won all five National Assembly seats he fought in the 2018 elections, and while his party did not win a majority of seats, it won the popular vote; and the Rajapaksa-led Sri Lanka People’s Party (SLPP) ruling coalition won 150 of 225 parliamentary seats in 2020. That these popular mandates could be cast aside in just a few years is a stark reminder that nothing is forever, especially in a democracy.

It is also clear that during the crises that Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka faced, the leaders who stepped into the breach may not have had the same political prowess or oratory presence as the leaders they replaced, but were acceptable both domestically and internationally because they had experience and education on their side. Mr. Deuba became Prime Minister for the fifth time, for example, Mr. Sharif had the longest tenure as Chief Minister of Pakistan’s Punjab in three terms before he became Prime Minister, and Ranil Wickremesinghe was appointed Prime Minister for the sixth time.

The economy matters

The next lesson is one that United States President George H.W. Bush learned in 1992 despite the Iraq war and his pitch to patriotism, as Bill Clinton defeated him in an election where the big slogan was “It’s the economy, stupid”. In Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka, the defeat of populists has come not so much at the hand of the Opposition parties, but by the slowdown in growth, jobs and rising inflation. India had already seen six successive quarters of straight losses in December 2019, and most of the neighbourhood was floundering as well, when COVID-19 was first reported. In the years that followed, the COVID-19 pandemic enforced lockdowns, and the resultant slowdown in the global economy made GDP figures in the region plummet. More recently, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and sanctions by the West have made food and fuel prices soar. In such a situation, the change in power in these three countries took only a small push, from the military, the courts, or from street protests. New Delhi must not only study the causes of the economic mismanagement that brought change in the neighbourhood but must also survey the impact of new vulnerabilities on smaller neighbouring countries that could be exploited by global powers as they seek a more direct influence in the region. Given the common challenges the region faces, New Delhi must find newer ways to energise regional groupings such as the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) and the Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal (BBIN) Initiative, and even to reconsider SAARC, in order to discuss shared approaches to reviving tourism and exports, supporting South Asian expatriate labour abroad, and building common pools of food and fuel stocks to soften inflationary blows on the South Asian economy.

Consensus needed

Finally, the Modi government must learn from the lessons in political culture that let down the “alpha leaders” in neighbouring democracies. One of the common threads in each of the governments (Rajapaksa, Oli and Khan) was an abhorrence for consensus building. In various ways, each of them turned their opposition into “the enemy”, and froze out the media, non-governmental organisations, and any voting constituency other than their own. Nations, especially democracies run on many engines — not just the single monolithic one of the party or people in power. As New Delhi essays its role as a regional leader, the Government would be wise to not only study the impact of changes in the neighbourhood on Indian policy but also to look into the mirror the neighbours hold up to India, for a better understanding of its future challenges within the country.

suhasini.h@thehindu.co.in



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Despite past experience and specific conditions, the Chhattisgarh government and the Maoists can work out a plan

Recently, the Chief Minister of Chhattisgarh, Bhupesh Baghel, while meeting the people during his State-wide tour, announced that the State government was ready for peace talks with the Maoists provided they laid down arms and expressed their faith in the Constitution of India.

Some conditions

In its response, through its spokesperson (pseudonym, Vikalp), the Dandakaranya Special Zonal Committee (DKSZC) of the CPI(Maoist) alleged (in a pamphlet issued on May 5, 2022) that the offer was dodgy, and wanted the Chief Minister to clarify his stand on the Maoist’s conditions for creating a conducive atmosphere in which to hold peace talks. The spokesperson also made other accusations and criticised the State government for not implementing the PESA or Provisions of Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996 in Chhattisgarh. The major conditions the Maoists want include: a lifting of the ban on their party, the People’s Liberation Guerilla Army (PLGA) and people’s organisations; withdrawal of security forces from camps, and the release of jailed leaders in order to participate in the talks. As the State government did not change its earlier stand, there has been no progress.

Earlier, in 2010, then Home Minister P. Chidambaram, tried to bring the Maoists to the negotiating table, with the line, “If you call a halt to violence, we are prepared to talk to you.” In response, Azad, alias Cherukuri Rajkumar (now deceased), a central politburo member and spokesperson of the Central Committee, CPI (Maoist), in an exclusive interview (11,400 words) toThe Hindu (“‘A ceasefire will create conducive atmosphere for talks’”, April 2010), had it in writing what his party’s three pre-conditions to a dialogue with the Union government were.

He clarified that the condition of ‘withdrawal of all-out war’ (as the first condition) was nothing but a cessation of hostilities by both sides simultaneously, i.e., mutual ceasefire and not unilateral ceasefire by the Maoists. Second, for peaceful legal work by the Maoists, lifting of the ban on the party (the second condition) was necessary. The third condition was that the government should adhere to the Constitution and end the illegal murders in the name of encounters, tortures and arrests. In order to hold talks, it was necessary for the government to release some leaders (also a part of the third condition) or else, there would be no one to talk to since the entire party was illegal.

This interview and the stand by Ganapathi ( then party general secretary) on talks with the government were also published in the Maoist magazine, ‘People’s March’. Swami Agnivesh, the peace broker between the government of India and the Maoists, forwarded Mr. Chidambaram’s letter of May 11, 2010 (addressed to Swami Agnivesh) to Azad which specifically mentioned the Maoists promise ‘no violence for 72 hours’ to initiate talks. Azad responded to Swami Agnivesh (May 31, 2010) and reiterated the party’s stand. However, Azad was killed in an encounter with the Greyhound commando force of the Andhra Pradesh police on July 2, 2010 and the process of trust building derailed.

Why talks failed

In the State Assembly election campaign in 2004, the Congress party promised to revive the peace process (that had broken down during Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu’s regime) if voted to power in Andhra Pradesh. To initiate talks, the State government lifted the ban on the party in May 2004. Consequently, there was four-day peace dialogue in October 2004 between the representatives of the People’s War (PW) party and government representatives at the initiative of the Committee of Concerned Citizens. A mutually acceptable team of mediators (led by former civil servant S.R. Sankaran) was constituted and an agreement on a ceasefire (eight clauses) was reached. The PW party (which had just merged with the Maoist Communist Centre of India, and other splinter Maoist groups in September 2004 to form the CPI(Maoist)), proposed a 11-point charter of demands such as legislation on land ceiling; creation of a separate state of Telangana; and questions associated with armed action by either side. Matters of land reform figured prominently in the discussions. While the State representatives raised the issue of laying down arms, this was not the agreed agenda and the issue was held in reserve for the second round of talks.

‘Clause 7’ (of the ceasefire agreement) which permitted the Maoists to undertake propagation of their politics without carrying weapons, had become problematic. Though the Maoists at the peace talks had handed over their weapons to their cadres while leaving the jungles, media pictures of activity by their armed squads made the police uneasy. The talks ended with an agreement on a ceasefire till December 16, the government promised to consider the main demand of land distribution among the landless, and talks again in November. Later, the Chief Minister declared that there would be no talks with the Maoists unless they agreed to lay down arms. The Andhra Pradesh Home Minister levelled allegations against the Naxalites about extortion for their meetings and construction of their memorials. Thus the peace process collapsed mid-way and the ban was re-imposed on the CPI(Maoist) and its sister organisations.

Using this background, it can be reasonably implied that the Maoist’s demand of withdrawal of armed police forces can be met by a mutually agreed ‘ceasefire’, with its limited meaning of abjuring violence by the Maoists and the halting of anti-Maoist operations by security forces for some period. The State government cannot afford the risk of moving out security forces as a pre-condition for initiating peace talks.

Government actions

Second, the release of jailed Maoist leaders need not be made a pre-condition by the Maoists, as most senior Maoist leaders are at large; there is no senior cadre in Chhattisgarh’s jails. Moreover, the Chhattisgarh government has not only withdrawn criminal cases against many tribals but has also ensured expeditious trial of Naxal cases. The government is also hard at work to implement PESA.

However, with regard to the third condition, of lifting a ban on the CPI(Maoist), the PLGA and its front organisations, some concessions may be thought of to let the talks happen. Further, it cannot be denied that the Maoists misused the ceasefire during the 2004 peace talks in Andhra Pradesh; Azad admitted in the interview, “We used it to take our politics widely among the people in the State and outside.” Therefore, moving forward with the lessons learned, suitable modalities may be worked out if both sides are serious about peace talks.

R.K. Vij is a former Special DGP of Chhattisgarh. The views expressed

are personal



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Courts must act to end the legal onslaught to change nature of places of worship

It is a matter of great concern that laws are being used to rake up religious controversies to give a fig-leaf of legitimacy to a communal onslaught on the country’s secular character. Obviously emboldened by the Supreme Court verdict handing over a disputed site in Ayodhya to Hindu claimants, determined and malicious efforts are being made by communal elements to capture sites in Varanasi and Mathura where the Gyanvapi mosque and Shahi Idgah Masjid are located. The idea that key places of worship among Muslims have been built after demolishing Hindu temples is beginning to take hold among sections of Indian society, with the active encouragement of politically affiliated religious groups. It was to prevent such attempts to change the character of places of worship in the name of correcting perceived historical wrongs that Parliament enacted the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991. It sought to freeze the status of places of worship as on August 15, 1947, so that existing suits and proceedings abate and new claims are not entertained. Yet, in flagrant violation of the law, courts are repeatedly allowing proceedings to be initiated. In Gyanvapi, not only has a civil judge entertained a suit but has also ordered a commission to videograph the mosque to ascertain its religious character. The Supreme Court has not been strong enough. Instead of putting an immediate halt to such proceedings aimed at creating a groundswell of opinion in favour of converting such sites into temples, it has only ordered some elementary measures to protect Muslim worshippers and their place of worship.

Anyone familiar with the history of the Ayodhya dispute, which led to the Babri Masjid’s demolition, riots and bombings, will understand that all such attempts to change the character of places of worship have a motive of using religion for political ends and marginalising minorities. Yet, even the Supreme Court feels some inexplicable need to let procedural aspects of civil law to be gone through in such litigation. It has transferred the Gyanvapi suit to the District Judge and asked for priority to be given to the petition to reject the plaint — which will involve the question whether the suit is barred by the Places of Worship Act. As long as even one application is pending somewhere, revanchist groups will continue the relentless onslaught on minority places of worship. In Mathura, the District Court has overturned a lower court’s order and ruled that the Act will not bar a suit aimed at removing a Masjid in the name of the site being the birthplace of Lord Krishna. The political atmosphere is conducive for such efforts, whose proponents will expect state backing. It is up to the courts to act early and act decisively to uphold the spirit of the Places of Worship Act and preserve communal peace.



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The Centre should be more conciliatory towards States’ fiscal dilemmas, GST concerns

Pronouncing its verdict on a protracted dispute over the levy of Goods and Services Tax (GST) on ocean freight charges paid by importers, the Supreme Court on Thursday held that such a tax was untenable. Its 153-page judgment has also dwelt at length on the nature of the recommendations of the GST Council, the constitutional body set up to oversee the operations of the indirect tax regime. Invoking the spirit of cooperative federalism, the Court has held that both the Union and State legislatures have “equal, simultaneous and unique powers” to make GST laws, and the recommendations of the Council, where they have a one-third and two-thirds voting share, respectively, are not binding on them. While amending the Constitution to pave way for the tax system that subsumed multiple central and State levies, Parliament had intended for the Council’s recommendations to only have ‘a persuasive value’, as per the Court. This has sparked fears that individual States can start vetoing the Council’s recommendations that they do not agree with, and refuse to implement them, thus threatening the ‘One Nation, One Tax’ edifice of a reform that took years to bring about. Opposition-ruled States have hailed the verdict as upholding their rightsvis-à-vis what a few termed as the ‘arbitrary imposition’ of Centre’s decisions in the Council. The Finance Ministry has sought to quell anxiety by indicating that the Court has only elaborated on the Council’s existing arrangement and the status quo would continue. States can already reject the Council’s decisions but none has chosen to so far, it said.

While North Block undertakes a detailed review of the verdict, it is pertinent that it had argued that if the Council’s recommendations were not binding, it would lead to an impasse and the entire GST structure would crumble. This does not hold water, the Court averred. That it has struck down a tax notified two days prior to the launch of the GST regime just as it is on the verge of completing five years, is perhaps, a fortuitous nudge for introspection on its journey and the way ahead. At worst, it can trigger more contestations in Council meetings, and at best, infuse a fresh sense of responsibility among members. The Centre could strive to be more conciliatory towards States’ concerns and fiscal dilemmas, especially as their assured compensation clock winds down next month, rather than seek to bulldoze over thorny predicaments with the tacit support of NDA-ruled States in the Council. The Council should also meet more often to nurture the critical fiscal federalism dialogue in the right direction and minimise trust deficits. There are many pending reforms that require the Centre to work more cohesively with States to take India’s economy forward and lift those left behind — including, but not limited to, an overhaul of land and labour markets as well as the agrarian sector.



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When Ranaut pitched into the recent debate on the north-south contest in the country's tinseldom with a dig at Hindi cinema's star kids, it seemed par for the course.

Who can quarrel with Kangana Ranaut over nepotism. Even her worst detractor, who is revolted by her pushing the victim card beyond its snapping point, would agree that Bollywood’s enfant terrible does the right thing by excoriating the industry’s hallowed circle for its casting choices and discriminating against outsiders. So, when Ranaut pitched into the recent debate on the north-south contest in the country’s tinseldom with a dig at Hindi cinema’s star kids, it seemed par for the course. “Dekhne me ajeeb se lagte hain jaise uble hue ande,” (they look weird, like boiled eggs) she reportedly said. Now that’s no way to refer to your colleagues — however, untalented. Body shaming aside, Ranaut also seems to have got her ande ka funda wrong — the charms of the boiled egg seem to have eluded her.

Agreed, it’s easy to go wrong with a boiled egg. From Julia Child to the newest cooking counsellor on the internet, advice — often conflicting — abounds on how to avoid rubbery whites, stuck-on shells or overcooked yolks. But ask those vendors with a pushcart or a tripod stand who are usually to be found close to bus stops, railways stations or even booze shops. For decades they have been getting the yolks buttery and sweet and the casing, pearly white. Sliced and tossed with chopped onions, coriander leaves, a dash of salt and pepper, and a bit of cumin powder, it makes for a snack that has revived the spirits of countless students, weary travellers and officer goers across generations.

Who can resist the pull of a hard-boiled egg with a spicy deep-fried coating of minced meat, dusted in flour and deep-fried till crispy? Call it by any name — Dimer Devil or Scotch Egg or the rich-gravy-laden Nargisi kofta. Or simply cook it in a pot with onions fried till brown, add tomatoes and your choice of spice and have them with appams, rotis, or parathas. Trust us, Kangana next time, you will look for a better simile for “weird” Bollywood babas and babies.



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The proposal to introduce an urban employment guarantee scheme comes in the backdrop of the pandemic exposing the precarious position of workers, especially those employed in the informal sector in urban areas.

A few days ago, the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister released a report on the state of inequality in India. The report, prepared by the Institute of Competitiveness, provides a detailed examination of the existing disparities in society. Based on wage data from the periodic labour force surveys, it has pegged the share of the top 1 per cent at around 6-7 per cent in total income, with the top 10 per cent estimated to earn around 30 per cent. In comparison, the report has pegged the bottom 50 per cent to hold only 22 per cent of income. Alongside, it has also explored inequities in access to health and education facilities. While this is rather commonplace, the more concrete suggestions of the report to tackle the issue of rising inequality in India — these range from putting in place an urban equivalent of MGNREGA to introducing universal basic income — require careful consideration.

The proposal to introduce an urban employment guarantee scheme comes in the backdrop of the pandemic exposing the precarious position of workers, especially those employed in the informal sector in urban areas. Proponents of this idea have argued that not only would this provide employment during times of distress, but this would also serve as a channel to push funds through quickly in periods of stress. Several states have in fact been experimenting with this concept. Recently, the Rajasthan government announced a scheme for urban areas — the Indira Gandhi Shahri Rozgar Guarantee Yojana — on the lines of MGNREGA. However, there are several problems with replicating the rural employment guarantee programme in urban areas. First, such a scheme may simply encourage migration, which without the creation of the attending infrastructure, will only exert further pressure on the crumbling facilities of these cities. Second, demand for work under MGNREGA tends to move in line with the agricultural cycle. As such it is seasonal in nature. However, in urban areas, there is no such seasonality in either work demanded or unemployment, complicating the design of such a scheme. And moreover, many of the migrant workers are unlikely to have the requisite skills needed for regular jobs in cities. Third, it is also debatable whether the educated but unemployed workers will take up these jobs. Fourth, there are capacity constraints with the urban local bodies, which are likely to be the implementing agencies. More critically, what are the kinds of public works in urban areas? Lastly, there is also the question of financing such a scheme at the national level.

The proposal seeks to address the continuing employment and inequality crisis that plagues India. However, India’s job challenge is structural in nature, owing in part to the absence of a labour-intensive manufacturing sector. A more prudent approach would be for economic policy to focus on boosting growth, lowering inequalities in opportunities, improving access to education and health, and providing pathways for upward mobility.



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Two politicians, Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi and Praful Patel, have ruled Indian football for the last 34 years and neither can claim to have taken the sport forward.

After dodging elections for almost two years, citing a pending court case, Praful Patel, the president of the All India Football Federation, has been red-carded by the Supreme Court. The apex court, on Wednesday, appointed a three-member Committee of Administrators (CoA) comprising retired SC judge A R Dave, ex-Chief Election Commissioner S Y Quraishi and former India captain Bhaskar Ganguly to run the federation’s day-to-day affairs and finalise a constitution which will enable them to conduct fresh elections. The move effectively ends Patel’s stint as the head of Indian football, which lasted for more than 10 years.

Two politicians, Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi and Patel, have ruled Indian football for the last 34 years and neither can claim to have taken the sport forward. During his high-flying yet controversial tenure, Patel’s personal stature in world football grew — he rose to become a member of world football’s highest decision-making committee, the FIFA Council — but Indian football fell behind. The national team still huffs and puffs its way to beat the South Asian rivals, struggles to qualify for the Asian Cup, let alone the World Cup, and the domestic league for women and men isn’t as robust as one would like it to be. Indeed, the football infrastructure has improved during the last 10 years and the sport doesn’t depend solely on government grants but on most other counts, precious little has been achieved.

While it is expected that the CoA will set AIFF’s house in order, the recent instances do not inspire confidence. The courts, in the recent years, have appointed administrators for multiple sports federations, including cricket, archery, table tennis and equestrian while the Indian Olympic Association, which is battling a similar case over tenure of elected officials, could go the same way as well. Despite this, there has been no marked improvement in the governance of any of these federations. Patel might no longer be the football chief but any hopes of an immediate change must be tempered.



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The Congress (I) which wrested power in Kerala along with its allies appeared to be in for a jolt at the hands of the Bharatiya Janata Party in Himachal Pradesh, while trailing behind the CP(M)-led Left Front in Bengal.

The Congress (I) which wrested power in Kerala along with its allies appeared to be in for a jolt at the hands of the Bharatiya Janata Party in Himachal Pradesh, while trailing behind the CP(M)-led Left Front in Bengal. As counting progressed in the mini general elections covering four states and 22 assemblies, a struggle for supremacy was on in Haryana with the Congress (I) and the Lok Dal-BJP alliance sharing the honours. None of them had secured the lead. In Kerala, the Congress-led United Democratic Front notched up a tally of 77 in the 140 member house while the Left Front secured the remaining seats.

Indo-China Impasse

The second round of talks between India and China came to an end in Delhi without the two sides arriving at an agreed plan for resolving the tangled boundary question. The officials have, however, agreed to meet in Beijing in a few months. An Indian government spokesperson almost conceded at the end that the two countries were at the “outer fringes of a maze” in looking for a solution to the boundary.

Ex-speaker Opens Fire

The Speaker of the dissolved Haryana Assembly Colonel Rao Ram Singh opened fire on a crowd that had gheraoed his house in Malina village in the Rewari assembly constituency while counting of the election results was on. A score of persons were injured. While details of the incident are awaited, the declaration of the results there have been withheld.

UK’s Aggression

Britain has told the commander of its navy task force to begin a series of landings and hit and runs in the Falkland Islands. The country’s Defence Ministry has confirmed this report.



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Arun Chawla writes: It is undeniable that cooperation is key to the smooth functioning of federal design. However, if it is coupled with positive competition among the states, then the overall result would be large-scale economic development across the country.

The ongoing discords between the Centre and states over issues ranging from the allocation of financial resources to fixing of GST rates has once again brought to the fore issues pertaining to our federal structure, the resolution of which is essential for the country’s growth.

The traditional approach to federalism that sees competition and cooperation at loggerheads is no longer relevant in the post-1990s scenario. Indian federalism today enables the Centre and states to function with both exclusivity and mutualism. The new approach has shown that a combination of cooperative and competitive spirit ensures the economic prosperity and welfare of the nation in an equal and equitable manner. It is undeniable that cooperation is key to the smooth functioning of federal design. However, if it is coupled with positive competition among the states, then the overall result would be large-scale economic development across the country.

Cooperation between the Centre and states is required at both vertical (between Centre and states) and horizontal (among states) levels and on various fronts. This includes fine-tuning of developmental measures for desired outcomes, development-related policy decisions, welfare measures, administrative reforms, strategic decisions, etc. Recent efforts in this direction, such as according greater leeway to states in the functioning of the NITI Aayog, frequent meetings of the prime minister with chief ministers as well as with chief secretaries and district magistrates, periodic meetings of the President of India with governors, and the functioning of “PRAGATI” to review the progress of developmental efforts have generated the requisite synergy between the Centre and states. The Covid-19 pandemic has served as a vital reminder that individual efforts are not enough to tackle national contingencies and there is a constant need to strengthen and renew the cooperative spirit in Indian federalism.

On the other hand, the competitive aspect of federalism can positively be harnessed by encouraging states to adopt each other’s best practices. This positive competition can be ensured vertically as well as horizontally. Positive efforts of states towards attracting investment can create a conducive environment for economic activities in urban and backward regions alike. Healthy competition coupled with a transparent ranking system would ensure the full materialisation of the vast but least utilised potential of the federal framework. In this direction, NITI Aayog’s initiatives such as launching sector-specific indices like the School Education Quality Index, Sustainable Development Goals Index, State Health Index, India Innovation Index, Composite Water Management Index, Export Competitiveness Index, etc. could prove to be a great contribution.

Healthy competition among states would also help them innovate and generate the requisite synergies for local businesses. Adoption of best practices as well as implementation of reforms at the ground level would positively impact the ease of doing business for MSMEs. This would raise India’s manufacturing capacity to the next level and radically transform India’s growth story. The rise in economic activities would result in higher GST collection and thereby boost the government’s welfare measures. Competition among states along with hand-holding by the Centre has the potential to enable the realisation of the goal of a five-trillion economy by 2024.

Central efforts toward synchronisation of cooperation and competition can be observed in the implementation of the 14th and 15th Finance Commission reports, which have greatly contributed to resource devolution. Recent reform measures in the form of the New Labour Code and other amendments/enactments by the legislature also exhibit this trend. The rising stature of the Indian economy on the world stage can only be strengthened by a tailored approach to cooperation and competition. The mandate to marry the two would inevitably be the collective responsibility of the Centre and the states. Any ideological differences between them will have to be inevitably put on the backburner for the great Indian federal structure to succeed and prosper.

This column first appeared in the print edition on May 21, 2022, under the title ‘The business of federalism’. The writer is director-general, FICCI



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Manish Sabharwal writes: Chief Ministers ought to create high wage jobs, and not borrow money future generations will have to repay

A senior Rajasthan ruling party worker reacted to my asking about handling the unsustainable borrowing burden of their recent civil servant pension decision with, “that bill is only due in 25 years”. My follow-up question about the injustice of 60 per cent of the Rajasthan government’s budget going to 5 per cent of the state’s population got “you don’t understand politics”. I guess questions about electricity in Punjab would get similar answers. The recent decision to deduct off-budget borrowings from state borrowing limits reminds chief ministers to be good policy ancestors by replacing steroids, painkillers, or placebos with sustainable medicine — five structural interventions that create high-paying jobs.

A modern state is a welfare state. Human lives were “nasty, brutish, and short” before there were democratic governments that could tax and borrow. In A Brief History of Equality, economist Thomas Piketty suggests that “the world of the early 2020s, no matter how unjust it may seem, is more egalitarian than that of 1950 or 1900, which were… more egalitarian than those of 1850 or 1780”. But how the welfare state is financed matters. Angela Merkel warned about the unsustainability of Europe being 8 per cent of the world’s population, 25 per cent of its GDP, and 50 per cent of its social spending. If Indian state governments could limitlessly print or borrow money, some would have finances resembling Sri Lanka’s.

Adjusting state borrowing limits for their off-budget borrowings leads to transparency because they are routinely breached through vehicles for schemes whose bill comes due far in the future. The confiscation of future spending — interest payments crowd out expenditure and revenue expenditure crowd out capex — matters because our prosperity problem is productivity, wages, not jobs. Unemployment is a poor labour market metric because self-exploitation is baked into our three low-wage shock absorbers — farming, informal wage employment, and self-employment. But five structural interventions by state governments can create higher-wage jobs:

Reduce regulatory cholesterol: States control 80 per cent of India’s employers’ compliance ecosystem of 67,000+ compliances, 6,500+ filings and 26,000+ criminal provisions. Raising wages needs raising the population of high productivity firms that access capital, value talent, use technology, and care about corruption (transmission losses between how the law is written, interpreted, practised, and enforced). State governments that rationalise, decriminalise, and digitise their compliance ecosystem will reap lower corruption and higher formality.

Fix government schools: State government skill missions have learned that we can’t teach kids in three months or three years what they should have learned in 12 years. The most powerful tool for social mobility and employability is free and quality school education. Interventions to fix government schools have primarily involved smaller class sizes, teacher salaries, teacher qualifications, and toilets. These are useful but not sufficient. State governments that undertake a significant overhaul of school performance management (the fear of falling and hope of rising for teachers) and governance (the allocation of decision rights around resources and hiring) will create an unfair advantage in human capital.

Converge education and employability: State governments have often extended and reinforced India’s traditional walls between degrees and skills. This partition is meaningless for the new world of work, organisations, and education. States should set up skill universities that create qualification modularity (between certificates, diplomas, advanced diplomas, and degrees), delivery flexibility (equate online, apprenticeships, on-site and on-campus classrooms), and pray to the one god of employers. Degree apprentices innovate at the intersection of employment, employability and education. State governments that remove barriers in their path will see their population of employed learners exceed full-time learners.

Devolve money and power: Cities drive productive job creation — New York City’s GDP is higher than Russia’s. Cities deliver social justice — the father of an IAS friend travelled from his village to Jodhpur for haircuts because the village barber refused to serve his caste. It took 70 years after 1947 for the budget of 28 states to cross the central government’s budget. The combined budget of state governments now exceeds Rs 45 lakh crore, but 2.5 lakh municipalities and panchayats have a budget of only Rs 3.7 lakh crore. Governments that devolve money and power from state capitals to their towns will avoid the curse of megacities and create the competition that drove China’s growth (they have 375 cities with more than a million people versus our 52).

Civil services reform: The infrastructure of opportunity needs better government schools, primary healthcare, policing, and infrastructure. State governments must sell their 1,500+ loss-making public sector units, cut civil service compensation to less than 40 per cent of budget spending, and replace expenditure with capex. Moving from outlays to outcomes needs a new human capital regime for civil servants via seven interventions; structure, staffing, training, performance management, compensation, culture, and HR capabilities. A tone from the top of “do less so we can do better” signals the will to create high-paying jobs more than ads.

Only a fool would suggest that our chief ministers don’t work hard in difficult jobs — elections are won on a complex cocktail of factors that I don’t appreciate. But Nobel Laureate James Buchanan said any state had three versions — the protective state (police, rule of law, defence, courts), the productive state (common goods like roads, power, health, education, etc.), and the redistributive state. Too many state governments accept the status quo in the first two and “innovate” in the third version. It’s time to shift resources to the first two.

In a recent visit to my birthplace of J&K — my first after I got my domicile certificate — an ageing but wise resident suggested the political dynasties of J&K had forgotten the distinction between a jagir (ownership that allows you to do whatever you want) and an amanat (a temporary duty to hand over what you got to the next generation in better condition). He also suggested that nothing can make anybody’s future better than a high-wage job. Irshaad, Haji Sahib.

This column first appeared in the print edition on May 21, 2022, under the title ‘Wealth of states’. The writer is with Teamlease Services



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Thomas Mathew writes: It would be unwise on the part of Biden and the Western alliance to escalate the Ukrainian crisis by waging a proxy war with Russia.

In the history of the world, the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis was the closest mankind came to Armageddon. Today, the unpredictability of the Ukraine war may take the world closer than ever to doomsday. It may still appear to be an unlikely scenario, but the world could be edging towards it.

In 1962, the two superpowers, the USSR and the US, were led by leaders who, in retrospect, make the present bunch look like pygmies.

They de-escalated the crisis in 13 days with both sides showing restraint. To avoid risking direct confrontation, the Soviets even diverted their ships when the US quarantined the zone and later shipped home their offensive weapons from Cuba. In return, the US promised not to invade the island nation and quietly withdrew the nuclear-armed missiles that it had installed in Turkey.

Today, the danger is that Russia, a nuclear superpower, is at war and the US has pulled all stops in a much-publicised attempt to “inflict pain” as its president, Joe Biden, said in his first State of the Union Address. The West has also employed a repertoire of crippling economic sanctions that the Vladimir Putin said was akin to “an act of war”. Putin’s warning that if any nation tries to “hinder” Russia or threaten it, Moscow’s “response will be immediate”, leading to consequences “never faced” by the intervener, has been largely ignored.

Putting his nuclear forces on “special combat readiness” also had little effect. Recognising the effectiveness of the Western arms supply, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov declared that any cargo carrying weapons to Ukraine could become its “legitimate targets”.

Biden and the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson have become dangerously confrontational. The former’s public call for a regime change in Moscow was at best an ill-advised provocation. Calling Putin a “criminal” has earned the US nothing except exposing many US presidents to being similarly described. Further, it has strengthened the Kremlin and pushed the Russian people to rally around their embattled president. As French President Emmanuel Macron remarked, “personal insults” can only inflame the situation.

It appears that the US is intent on delivering Russia the same blow it landed on its predecessor, the USSR, after its intervention in Afghanistan in 1979. This policy is dangerous. It may lead to the situation spinning out of control.

The US, Canada, Australia, France, Netherlands and a host of other nations are shipping large quantities of sophisticated and heavy weapons capable of seriously degrading Russia’s less sophisticated large artillery guns, their mainstay in the war. The guns supplied could become more lethal as the US is directing their fire. In addition, they are providing real-time intelligence and engaging in several secret ways to wreak maximum destruction of Russian forces. London on its part is provoking Ukraine to strike inside Russia.

If the Russian military suffers heavy damage, Moscow could have a closer look at the US policy undergirding the “National Security Strategy of the United States of America 2002”. It reasons that it would be an act of “self-defence,” to “act against” “emerging threats before they are fully formed.”

George W Bush justified the invasion of Iraq in 2003 asserting that it has the right of pre-emptive military action and declared, “We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans and confront the worst threats before they emerge. In the world we have entered, the only path to safety is the path of action. And this nation will act.” If Moscow adopts this doctrine, then it could claim the right to take out weapons arriving from neighbouring NATO countries using its hypersonic missiles. It could even use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine.

The Western alliance is taking a grave risk in assuming that Russia will not use such weapons and will continue to suffer and eventually withdraw. To anyone who knows the Russian psyche, that is a fanciful hope. Moscow had dropped its no-first-use policy in 1993 to counter groupings deploying large conventional forces against it. Moscow could be pushed to use the same logic that the US did in dropping nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and that it seriously contemplated using at least on two occasions when it was staring at defeat — during the Korean War and in Vietnam.

Many have got Putin wrong many times. Many believed that his pleas for NATO to stop expanding further east and Lavrov’s pleas that

Moscow was reaching “boiling” point contained no threat. It had and Putin went to war.

Tactical nuclear weapons with a yield of 0.1 to 1 kiloton were first developed by the US and NATO deployed it in the 1950s. Deceptively named rockets like Honest John carried these weapons that had varying yield up to 20 kilotons (the bomb dropped in Hiroshima had a 16-kiloton yield).

Scholars like Henry Kissinger, former US secretary of state, and Robert Osgood, professor and adviser to US president Ronald Reagan, argued that the West could take on the Soviet Union using these weapons in “limited nuclear wars” without resorting to the “threats of massive retaliation”.

The effectiveness of this doctrine has, however, not been tested. It would be unwise on the part of Biden and the Western alliance to escalate the Ukrainian crisis by waging a proxy war with a nuclear superpower that suffers conventional arms asymmetry. It would not be prudent to test the limits of Putin’s resolve.

This column first appeared in the print edition on May 21, 2022, under the title ‘Avoidable gambit’. Thomas Mathew is a retired civil servant who has served in the Indian Defence Ministry, Institute for Defence Studies and Analysis and writes on security issues



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Sarasu Esther Thomas writes: Now that arguments against it have come up, let us hope it is only a matter of time before we can call a spade, a spade and a rapist, a rapist

Written by Sarasu Esther Thomas

“Sexual intercourse by a man with his own adult wife is not rape.” This proposition reflected in Exception 2 to Section 375 of the Indian Penal Code is also referred to as the marital rape exception (MRE) as it removes marital rape from punishable rape law. This was challenged in a petition before the Delhi High Court before a two-judge bench with Justice Rajiv Shakdher and Justice C Hari Shankar.

Both judges took very different stands — Justice Shakdher holding the exception to be unconstitutional and Justice Shankar upholding the exception, thus leading to a stalemate, which may be broken by a decision by the Supreme Court on appeal, or a law reform by Parliament. Until then the law may stand.

Both judges felt that the sexual autonomy of women cannot be compromised. Both found the idea of forcing the wife to have sex abhorrent.

However, they differed on whether all non-consensual sex between a man and a woman would be rape. Justice Shakdher felt that one category of offenders would be immune to punishment if they committed an act, which has been clearly defined as rape in the rest of the section. He felt that, therefore, every woman subject to rape should be able to file a criminal case, regardless of the identity of the perpetrator. Justice Shankar, on the other hand, laid this open for debate on the basis that marriage is a unique relationship that may justify differential treatment, carrying with it a “legitimate expectation of sex”. He considered sex between husband and wife as sacred and immune from interference by allegations of rape, especially as denial of sex without reason could amount to cruelty under family law. He felt that it would adversely affect the institution of marriage if the husband were to be considered the wife’s rapist.

Both judges spoke about the difference in treatment between married and unmarried women and whether it would be constitutional. The test for whether there is intelligible differentia with the object sought to be achieved was variously answered with Justice Shakdher holding it to be unreasonable classification which is arbitrary and thus violative of Article 14. Article 14 guarantees equality before the law and equal protection of the law. The Exception takes this away from a large chunk of women.

Justice Shankar, on the other hand, sees viable intelligible differentia between a married couple and two people who are not married. He reiterates, time and again, that the Exception clearly says that sexual acts between a husband and wife are not rape.

“My body, my right” is an integral part of the right to personal liberty for every woman. Not protecting personal liberty by refusing to punish a serious infringement violates a wife’s rights under Article 21. Right to life, dignity and bodily privacy are also arguments raised by the petitioners.

Preservation of the institution of marriage has been used in the past to turn a blind eye to violations of women’s rights in the private sphere. Justice Shakdher was firm that the state does not have an interest in saving a tyrannical marriage. On the other hand, Justice Shankar felt that there was an obligation on the judiciary to preserve the marriage and to make all efforts to save the matrimonial bond. Family relations have been put on a pedestal.

In an analogy, Justice Shankar stated that “a father slapping a son is not a criminal offence, whereas a stranger who slaps a child may well be committing a crime.” However, assault and battery have no Exceptions in the Indian Penal Code. Violence against children is a crime regardless of the perpetrator. This is true for women as well. Seen against this, Exception 2 would be an anachronism.

National Family Health Survey (NFHS) data cited in Justice Shakdher’s judgment shows that married women face sexual violence in large numbers. They are 17 times more likely to face sexual violence from their husbands rather than from outsiders. Very few complain. This is true of domestic violence in general. When the problem is so widespread, not addressing this would be an omission violative of constitutional guarantees of equality to women as well as a violation of India’s obligations under The Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

If marital rape is not considered rape, what remedy would a wife have? Justice Shankar acknowledges that she would have criminal remedies under various provisions including 498A. However, this is not “fair labelling” according to the petitioners. A rape is after all a rape.

Meanwhile, other high courts have also considered this issue. In Gujarat, in the case of Nimeshbhai Bharatbhai Desai (2018) the court held that the MRE did not make the offence rape, but held that a woman could prosecute her husband for unnatural offences (Section 377). In Karnataka, in the case of Hrishikesh Sahoo earlier this year, the court said that the MRE was an unequal provision and that marital status should not be an excuse in cases of sexual assault. It did not interfere with the framing of charges of rape of the wife against the husband.

There is definitely a lot of churn as far as marital rape is concerned. The ideal situation is to have law reforms spearheaded by the legislature. This would address issues that have arisen such as penalties for marital rape. As of now, there is a lower punishment for separated couples and the incongruity of having a higher punishment for married men and a lower one for separated men has been pointed out. However, in the absence of legislative intervention, courts must step in and a decision from the Supreme Court on this important issue is hoped for.

The importance of challenging the MRE cannot be downplayed. Now that an argument to scrap the Exception has been raised, let us hope it is only a matter of time before we can call a spade, a spade and a rapist, a rapist.

This column first appeared in the print edition on May 21, 2022, under the title ‘Nothing sacred about it’. The writer is professor of law, National Law School of India University, Bengaluru



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The Supreme Court’s decision to shift the Gyanvapi suit from a civil judge to the Varanasi district judge, who the court said is “senior and experienced”, prolongs a matter the apex court could have ended. The Places of Worship Act, 1991, bars conversion of a place of worship, preserves its religious character as it existed at Independence, and by SC’s 2019 interpretation in the Ayodhya judgment, it places “a bar on the institution of fresh suits or legal proceedings”. Having accepted the special leave petition against the Varanasi court ordering a survey, SC should have used its discretionary powers under Article 136 to enforce the 1991 Act, which it praised fulsomely in the Ayodhya judgment.

The district judge will decide first on the Muslim side’s plea for rejecting the plaint under Order 7, Rule 11 of the Civil Procedure Code. Last September too, SC had said that when a suit is barred by law, reliefs sought under it cannot be granted and the plaint is liable to be rejected to “put an end to the sham litigation so that no more judicial time is wasted”. In this case, the 1991 law minces no words in its statement of object and reasons – it says that in view of “controversies arising from time to time on conversion of places of worship” the Act seeks to “foreclose any controversy”.

Equally worrisome is SC’s oral observation that the 1991 Act only bars change in religious character but not ascertainment of religious character. Recall that the Act attempts to “foreclose” controversies. Allowing disputes to fester through ascertainment was clearly not what the Act intended. Not only is judicial time being wasted by such litigation, public order and rule of law are at risk. And just as a reminder, a Mathura court has ruled the 1991 Act doesn’t apply to the Shahi Idgah dispute. SC must act.



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After an underwhelming performance at the Tokyo Olympics, Indian boxing’s hopes have been single-handedly restoked for the Paris Games by Nikhat Zareen. The Nizamabad-born pugilist has delivered the country’s first World Boxing Championship gold in 16 years, other than all those won by Mary Kom. Her biopic was the very first film that Nikhat watched in a cinema hall but the legend’s long shadow is something she has battled too. That’s in the past. Now Nikhat can cheerily josh about who should lead her own biopic.

Her triumph over injuries and self-doubt will be an inspiration to girls to take up the sport, against various odds. Nikhat is very candid about belonging to a community that expected her to stay at home and worried about how they would marry her off if she got bruised. The one thing she had going for her was her parents, who stood by her ambitions steadfast. But secondly, a stubbornness in her took on every “don’t” as a challenge and battered straight through it.

At the press conference after becoming World Champion, she disarmingly confessed that trending on Twitter has also been a dream of hers. Of course, not everyone who tweeted congratulations would have bothered to actually watch her dazzling 5-0 finals. The only surety of sticking in India’s sport imagination, unless you are a cricketer, is an Olympic medal. That’s Nikhat’s bigger dream.



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When the leaders of Australia, India, Japan, and the United States (US) meet for just the second time in-person as Quad in Japan this month, the focus will likely be on their economic partnership. A trade deal is currently out of the question: New trade deals lack support in the US Congress. But the US has proposed an Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) to promote economic connectivity, resilience, sustainability, and accountability and has been in the process of consulting partners on this initiative. While in some ways an extension of US President Joe Biden’s domestic agenda, IPEF’s success will hinge on its details, and the response and participation of other countries.

But amid its growing profile, activities, and importance, Quad should not lose sight of security cooperation in the Indo-Pacific, which will matter significantly for the regional balance of power. Over the past year, Quad cooperation on a number of other important areas has progressed considerably. These include critical and emerging technology cooperation, vaccine diplomacy, infrastructure, humanitarian assistance, scientific collaboration, and space. Some initiatives are still nascent, while others — such as on Covid-19 vaccines and university research fellowships — have received private sector support and will have near-term tangible outcomes.

To be fair, Quad security cooperation is already underway. In readouts, the four countries have revealed discussions on Myanmar, Afghanistan, North Korea, and maritime security in the Indo-Pacific. Intelligence leaders and cybersecurity coordinators from the four countries have met as a group. The Malabar naval exercise brings together the four navies, which have also engaged in ad hoc exercises with Canada and South Korea (on anti-submarine warfare), the United Kingdom (UK), and France.

But security cooperation among Quad countries remains largely bilateral. The four engage in 2+2 dialogues with each other, involving their foreign and defence ministers. They also hold military staff talks; organise military exercises, involving ground, air, and maritime forces; enjoy logistics-sharing agreements with each other; and have structured dialogues on maritime security, defence technology, and counter-terrorism. Recently, Japan and Australia concluded an agreement to facilitate a military presence on each other’s soil. The US and Australia (along with the UK) entered into an arrangement, known as AUKUS, to cooperate on sensitive technologies, including nuclear submarine propulsion.

There are three reasons why security cooperation involving all four Quad countries has not been accorded a higher priority. First, there are concerns in other regional Indo-Pacific countries — including in South and Southeast Asia — that Quad military cooperation could exacerbate tensions with China, rather than reduce them. By contrast, the non-security focus of Quad has been welcomed in Southeast Asia; in one elite survey conducted last year, 60% of Southeast Asian respondents favoured a stronger Quad with a largely non-security focus.

Second, the bilateral security partnerships among Quad countries are different from each other and are, therefore, likely to progress at different rates. On one end of the spectrum, the US has decades-long alliances with Japan and Australia, which include a history of overseas basing and joint operations. By contrast, India’s security partnerships with Japan and Australia — despite impressive progress over the past two decades — are relatively new and unlikely to resemble the US’s treaty alliances.

Third, the security partnership among Quad nations benefits from its flexibility. There is no political appetite or expectation of mutual defence. Quad will, therefore, not resemble an Asian version of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). In fact, closer cooperation is driven in large part by an acknowledgement of constrained resources. Budgetary constraints could mean that the US Navy will not be able to function in the Indian Ocean to meet future challenges, while an Indian naval presence east of the Malacca Strait will always be more limited. Quad is not about all four countries being everywhere at once, but, in fact, about a distribution of labour when it comes to security over a vast region.

Nonetheless, a lot can still be done. A first area of focus ought to be on information and intelligence sharing, including — but not restricted to — the maritime domain. This will require coordinating information from maritime patrol aircraft, drones, satellites, and submarine sensors. While cooperation on maritime domain awareness has increased bilaterally, information gathered by all four countries can be more seamlessly integrated to meet certain shared security objectives. This would complement the current intelligence liaison relationships among the four countries and the sharing of strategic assessments by officials.

A second area might involve operational cooperation. This can be done through cross-servicing, resupply and replenishment at sea, mid-air refuelling, ship repair, and a host of legal arrangements to facilitate such services. While in the past, Indian analysts have expressed concerns about such arrangements undermining Indian sovereignty, they need not be automatic or intrusive. Instead, India would benefit from such support to expand its military presence. Furthermore, such habits of cooperation could be utilised effectively against non-traditional security threats such as illegal fishing, piracy, smuggling, disaster relief, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

A third area of eventual cooperation might relate to improving defence capacity, including on trade, manufacturing, and technology. In all four countries, efforts are underway to indigenise defence production for security, economic, and political reasons. But joint efforts at integrating supply chains — particularly in less-sensitive areas — would complement the use by Quad countries of certain common platforms, such as aircraft and helicopters. Joint research and development may prove too complicated in most instances — given the differences in requirements and acquisition systems — but may be worth exploring in the future.

Quad has certainly come a long way in a relatively short amount of time, defying many sceptics’ predictions. To its credit, the Biden administration did not dispense with Quad despite its earlier association with the Donald Trump administration. It has resulted in multiple structured contact points within the four governments and has improved technology and economic cooperation.

But if Quad is to help preserve a stable balance of power in the Indo-Pacific, while continuing to provide the region with public goods, security cooperation will have to deepen. This will require acknowledging the concerns of partner countries, treading carefully, and slowly building trust and habits of cooperation. As the war between Russia and Ukraine has demonstrated, we are entering a dangerous new world, one in which the prospect of great power competition spilling over into great power conflict is no longer a remote possibility.

Dhruva Jaishankar is executive director, ORF America

The views expressed are personal



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Thank you for reaching out. But I’m afraid a book on education will not appeal to a general interest audience”. Hearing this more than a few times from editors who commission book reviews forced me to reflect on the true import of the message. I realised that schools and education are not quite considered “general interest” material, a label which has been easily affixed to books on history and fashion and food and economics and sport. For me, these conversations revealed the commonly held notion that schools are outside of, and separate from, society.

For far too long, we have looked at schools as cocooned in a rather mechanical education system, which is meant to produce literate, numerate, and employable individuals. Achieving foundational literacy and numeracy is doubtless an important and incontestable goal. We should strive to provide this for every child. But should the building of such individual academic ability be the sole goal of education?

The macro-issues plaguing our nation, and for that matter the world, are not those that stem from a lack of technical expertise or scientific know-how. Instead, they are arising from the inability of individuals and institutions with differing world views to work together, a general inclination to amass power and authority to further one’s ambitions, and a pervasive climate of division, discord, and one-upmanship.

Can we have a just, equitable and humane society if schools are not interested in these issues? How will children learn to live and work together despite these differences? How can children be encouraged to think independently and listen to and learn from each other? How can they feel related to each other in a way beyond the rigid identities of religion, language, and socio-economic class? Aren’t schools well-placed to catalyse some of these conversations and enable children to engage deeply with them?

Schools and society inform and shape each other in equal measure. How we respond to the question “What kind of schools do we want for our children?” will most certainly determine the answer to the question “What kind of society will we be tomorrow?” And so, there’s an urgent need for pedagogy and learning contexts in our schools to speak to philosophical themes of knowing oneself, learning to work together, learning from (as opposed to “about”) the environment, nurturing sensitivity, and examining fear. School trips, art, sport, community work, stage-theatre, student assemblies, parents-teachers meetings, and exams, can all be reimagined to allow children, and by extension, their parents, to explore these themes.

For example, the simple, sustained practice of playing games over many years in school in a mixed age, mixed gender, mixed ability format can enable valuable insights for children into patience, mutual respect, and openness to working with people of varying abilities. And doing this can diffuse the undue focus given to the scoreline in most physical games.

We are taking concrete steps toward making education a social good in our country. But this work can be infinitely more fruitful if we stop looking at schools and education as a “niche and specialised” topic, and as something that only teachers, administrators, and policymakers should be concerned with.

Instead, the need of the hour is to elevate education to a “general interest” topic, to open it up to more non-politicised public discourse, and hold it accountable to higher order goals than just literacy and numeracy. If we can manage this, we may well end up sowing the seeds for the kind of society we want to be.

Ashwin Prabhu is a teacher and author of, Classroom With A View - Notes from the Krishnamurti schools The views expressed are personal



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Last Sunday, along with three friends, I went on a field trip to Mirzapur in Uttar Pradesh (UP). In the scorching sun, as we crawled into a cave on a rocky precipice and settled under a precarious cliff edge to soak in the view from the Kaimur Hills, three species of vultures gave us a magnificent fly-past, while the river Son floated like a simmering ribbon in the heat at a distance.

However, an astonishing story lay on the rock face: A series of primitive rock art (almost 4,000 years old, known as Lekhahia paintings). They depict how our ancestors lived, hunted, fought and celebrated life. This was also a way to record life in nature. We tried looking for something that resembled a hyena in the paintings. The previous night, we had seen one, with the help of Kartik Singh, a young, talented naturalist from Mirzapur.

Unlike its portrayal in the television series, Mirzapur is a treasure trove of natural history. One can easily get lost in its terrain with deep gorges and waterfalls, and pockets of dry deciduous forest. Several residents disapproved of the screen infamy the district has acquired. Instead, they talked about Percy Windham, the longest-serving collector of Mirzapur (1900-13), and his fondness for hunting big game with his close friend, hunter-turned-conservationist Jim Corbett. This infamous sport remained a popular pastime in Mirzapur until enforcement agencies started clamping down on it in recent times. In 2017, Mirzapur was in the headlines when wildlife authorities seized five caracals from wildlife traders.

We had no luck finding a caracal, but with Singh’s keen tracking skills, we saw a jungle cat on a hunt in one of the fallow fields. It seems Mirzapur is a place for small mammals, especially wild cats. Singh also showed us camera-trap images of the Asiatic wild cat, also known as Indian desert cat (a first for UP), leopard, civet, sloth bear, sambar deer, porcupines, and jackals from a recent survey by Vindhyan Ecology and Natural History Foundation (VENHF), a non-governmental organisation (NGO) working towards establishing a conservation reserve in Mirzapur. We also heard about the presence of wolves and how the animal tracks the movement of nomadic pastoral communities.

But, with every passing year, a bit of the wilderness vanishes as new development springs up. Already a sprawling campus of the Banaras Hindu University has nibbled away at the fragmented forest. But fortunately, the construction of a 1,320-megawatt (MW) coal-fired power station has been stopped by VENHF after allegations emerged in the press that information about the presence of endangered wildlife at the project site (on forestland) was concealed by the promoters.

It’s not just Mirzapur. Many such lesser known wild landscapes are disappearing across India. Apart from forest diversions for developmental projects, illegal land grabbing, unsustainable mining practices and converting forests into farmlands are rampant. For example, in central India, 840 acres of the dense Hasdeo forest in Chhattisgarh will be sacrificed for coal mining. India is considered a mega diverse country, with its rich heritage of biological diversity and high endemism. It is unfortunate that the country publishes a wasteland atlas, ignoring the ecology and ecosystems of these places.

Despite the steady loss of “natural forest,” researchers are finding new species. In 2021, India added 557 new species to the faunal list (now 102,718 species) and 267 new botanical species (54,733 species). India is only 2.4% of the world’s total land surface with 18% of the world population, 8.1% of the global species diversity jostling with 535.78 million livestock (2019 livestock census). And on paper, 5.26% of India’s 2.4% total land surface is marked as a “protected area network”. But do species know boundaries drawn by humans? A 2018 study, Biomass Distribution on Earth, revealed that humans and livestock comprise 96% of the earth’s biomass, leaving only 4% for wild animals. Humans represent just 0.01% of all living things, yet our activities have caused a staggering 83% loss of all wild mammals and half of plants (50%) since agricultural expansion.

Today is International Biodiversity Day. If you want to know more about the world’s natural heritage and how humans are destroying it, do look up The Fence, an artwork by the American novelist Daniel Quinn. It is a satire on human civilisation’s unabated expansion, our changing relationship with the natural world, and why we should not remain oblivious of a heritage called biodiversity.

Ananda Banerjee is an author, artist and wildlife conservationist, associated with the Wildlife Trust of IndiaThe views expressed are personal



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It’s a dreadful cliché, but perhaps it best explains a proposal by former Sri Lankan president Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga to change the governance structure of her country in response to the terrible crisis it faces. “Necessity is (indeed) the mother of invention” in this case. But what is that necessity? “The key problem,” she told me, “is that Sri Lankans have lost all faith in politicians”. Now isn’t that a predicament we face as well? So, could her solution work for us? I think it might.

What Ms Kumaratunga is proposing is an institution that will function alongside but parallel to the government. It will, of course, be subordinate to it, but it must always be consulted and, as she adds, “heard very seriously”. This institution — and in a moment I’ll tell you about it — is designed to give space and an opportunity to be heard to leading members of civil society.

Called the “Council of State”, it will have a five-year term and comprise 36 members, nine of whom are politicians, but 27 others nominated by civil society organisations such as the professions, business and the private sector, academia and a variety of non-government organisations. Members nominated by civil society will outnumber politicians 3:1. The chairman will be a distinguished citizen. It could be a former politician, but he cannot be a practising one. Ms Kumaratunga says this council has two key functions. “It will review important laws and policies before they are presented to Parliament by the government”, particularly those to do with the economy, governance, health and education. Second, “it may also propose laws to the cabinet and government”.

If you sense this is in some way similar to the United Progressive Alliance’s National Advisory Council, you would not be mistaken. But it’s a lot more than that. For a start, it’s not limited to people Sonia Gandhi admires and respects. It will include people of all viewpoints. They simply have to be distinguished in whatever field they’ve chosen to plough.

Ms Kumaratunga also intends this to be a formal and permanent part of Sri Lanka’s government and not an emergency response to the present crisis. If passed, incoming administrations will hereafter appoint a “Council of State” that will serve coterminously with the government.

I guess the intention behind Ms Kumaratunga’s proposal is obvious and straightforward. It’s not just to provide a permanent platform for independent, respected, sagacious and informed voices to advise and guide the government but also to broaden the base from which ideas for governance are sought, discussed, amended and, finally, agreed upon.

To put it pithily, it gives the cognoscenti — even if Italian, it’s certainly the mot juste in the circumstances! — who are otherwise limited to discussions on television and columns in newspapers, a means to be heard directly by the government and specifically consulted before key decisions are made. Of course, the government is free to disregard the Council. If that were not the case, Ms Kumaratunga accepts the government would be “degraded”. But the Council must be given adequate opportunity to be consulted and its views, critical or appreciative, must be considered seriously.

That, of course, is the catch. What would amount to proper consultation and effective consideration? Could it be evaded or diminished by sleight of hand? Of course, it can. But if it’s formally required, it has to be formally gone through. That will lessen the opportunities to circumvent. After that, we can only rely on everyone’s sense of honour and integrity.

I think something similar would make a lot of sense in India, perhaps, particularly at this moment when the country is increasingly polarised and the government is perceived as divisive.

If we had a Council of State, I doubt if demonetisation would have happened. I’m sure the Goods and Services Tax would have been better thought through. And almost certainly a lockdown at four-hours’ notice would have been inconceivable. Could these be three good reasons why former president Kumaratunga’s proposal might work for us as well?

Karan Thapar is the author of Devil’s Advocate: The Untold Story The views expressed are personal



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Try intermittent fasting, said everyone.

Works like a dream.

 

You just don’t eat for 16 hours, 18 hours, 22 hours and magically, your body fat all disappears.

In between, they said, in those eight hours, six hours, two hours, you stuff your face.

There was some scientific mumbo-jumbo about your body sleeping and waking and cells rejuvenating.

All dieting science sounds fantastic.

A kind social media friend said they lost “kg”s and “kg”s while intermittenting.

Another real-life friend said a relation had become half their size in spite of eating potato chips and what Bengalis call “bhaja bhujis” nonstop.

 

My doctor scoffed.

Someone else stuck in another note of caution: men appear to benefit more than women.

Anyway, I had nothing to lose except faith in a lifetime of other diets only a few of which actually worked.

In two months, I lost 2 kg.

In celebration, I gained another two.

Okay, I joke, sort of.

Three months later the pandemic arrived. And there we were at home, those of us lucky enough that is. Eating what we could and trying to make sourdough bread.

The world of the privileged that includes voluntary diet control and excessive exercise.

 

And battling with a wheat and water combination in a glass bottle which bubbles, smells like who-knows-what and turns black the second you close your eyes.
I gave up on the bread.

But carried on with the 16-eight hour fast-eat combo.

This time, nothing happened.

All right. I lie. In between lockdowns, I checked my cholesterol levels and they had plummeted. My statin intake was drastically reduced. The weighing scale told its own story, none of it pleasant.

Cause and effect? Who knows.

After two years, I have now officially given up.

 

The problem of course is that I know the problem.

But like all people who need to shed a few kilos, I want that magic bullet. A pill that melts fat away. A tiny bit of starvation discomfort. The easiest form of exercise. And as few dietary restrictions as possible.

And there’s that whole dieting industry ready to “help” you get your wallet so much thinner.

I’ve had friends who paid big amounts to dieticians to be told to eat 1 protein biscuit at 2 am, 6 g of cauliflower at 9 am and half a spoon of dal at 1 pm. How long does anyone stick to rubbish advice like this? I would reckon, minus brainwashing, about 15 min. Otherwise, maybe a week?

 

Then there are the new apps. Some trainer yells at you three times a week to move, move, move and after every meal you upload your calories. If the app maker has not heard of chicken stroganoff? Then either you cheat or you pretend that boiled chicken is the same as some well — cheesy sauced chicken.

A friend and I have done the famous GM diet three times. The first time we were in our 20s and the weight we wanted to lose was largely imaginary. Thus, it worked reasonably well except that after six days of one-day tomato, one-day milk, one-day chicken soup whatever, we never managed to reach and complete Day 7.

 

However, it did work for a week after that.Before the body ate potato chips in our sleep and without our knowledge, and thus all the gain was on the hips and tummy.

In subsequent efforts, we only reached Days 5 and 4 and then went out and had a few drinks with popcorn and finger chips. (Aside: You may call them fries, not French fries, blah blah whatever nonsense, but chips are chips. Except when they are also wafers. Either way, they are great side dishes when you’re supposedly dieting.)

Now these evil social media experts inform us that sabudana — often cited as some great non-carb thing for semi-keto diets — is nothing but overly processed pure carbs! No more deep-fried crisp delicious sabudana vadas then! And what about all that kappa in Kerala? In fact, I am terribly confused about tapioca itself. Is it a good or bad thing? Why do we think that tapioca is a cereal alternative?
Which brings me to that no-carbohydrate ketosis thing that people went crazy for. I never tried it. The extreme fussiness of it and the cost of the ingredients that you actually could eat were both prohibitive.

 

It was even worse than that other once-popular Aktins diet which was all very high protein-low carbs and you could only eat fruit after 6 pm or something. I remember some of us convincing an acquaintance that this included fruit cocktails which led to a very boozy evening and total death of the Atkins no-nos.
The alacrity with which this otherwise intelligent person was convinced of this so blatantly nonsensical theory demonstrates how and why dieting is such an impossible task if your will is not already made of iron and then reinforced by some other strong thing I can’t be bothered to Google.

 

You may notice that I have not mentioned temptation in the form of something sweet. This is just a personal thing. I know several dieters who become even bigger blubblery blobs when faced with chocolate or jalebis or whatever. With me, sugar is a hit-and-miss as a diet-breaker but to each his or her own favourite weakness. I think fried potatoes would do me in.

So, I have now restricted myself. Not much for dinner. No bread. As little rice as I can bear. Limited sugary stuff. All that yawn-inducing stuff you don’t want to hear or know about. It’s boring. That’s all I can tell you. No magic potions. No lying on a table getting bombarded by UV light that melts fat. No fancy gym. Just huffing and puffing on a morning walk.

 

My doctor finds this very funny.

As long as I don’t succumb to that diet pill that objects to fried food and causes anal leakage.

O no. Ageing causes enough problems without voluntarily opting for that!
Sorry if I ruined your breakfast.



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In 2022, India is one of the 36 countries where it is not a crime for a husband to rape his wife. By 2019, 150 countries had criminalised marital rape.

In Indian law, under the exception to Section 375 of the Indian Penal Code, sexual intercourse between a man and his wife, if she is over the age of 15, is not rape. Recently, this was challenged by petitions to the Delhi high court and after hearings, a week ago, a split verdict on the issue of criminalisation of marital rape was given. The case will now go to the Supreme Court.

 

How prevalent is sexual violence in marriage? In the National Family Health Survey-5 (NFHS-5), conducted over 2019-20, women between the ages of 18 and 49 (who were currently or previously married) were asked about different types of violence they faced from their spouse. The responses suggest that one in every 25 women — often or sometimes — experienced sexual violence by their husbands.

Of the 4,169 women who experienced sexual violence, 82 per cent said the perpetrator was their husband. Of this, 84 per cent said their husbands “physically forced them to have sexual intercourse with him even when they did not want to”. This falls within the Indian Penal Code’s definition of rape.
Why then is it so difficult to talk about marital rape in India? And why is it important to seek legislation on it? Let’s start with marriage. In arranged, love, or arranged love marriages, it is assumed there will be sex, for procreation, and pleasure.

 

Young men and women in India have little knowledge of their bodies. Families don’t talk about it, as parents themselves are uncomfortable or lack the knowledge, language, and way to approach the subject. Schools have been reluctant to accept sex education curricula and often opposed it. Most young people, studies suggest, learn about sex and sexuality from pornography and friends.

Opposition and reluctance to sex education is based on the belief that if young people are taught about sex and sexuality, they will want to have sex, and that is not acceptable to our social mores. But young people are having sex, often without protection, or knowledge of their bodies or consequences of their acts, emotional and physical.

 

Parents are keen that their daughters marry so they will not have to be responsible for them. Sons are married, so they do not stray, sexually. Young men are socialised to believe that proof of their manhood is by having sex with their wives on the wedding night. For many women, not prepared for their marital duties when it comes to sex, marriage night is a rape night.

Rape, sexual assault, and sexual abuse have different legal definitions. In general, they are all forms of violence in which there is sexual contact without consent — and includes vaginal or anal penetration, oral sex, and genital touching.

 

Consent is tricky business. The #MeToo movement brought attention to the complex issue of consent. In intimate relationships, technically, consent is when one person agrees to or gives permission to another person to do something. It means agreeing to an action based on knowledge of what that action involves, its likely consequences and having the option of saying no. In the Indian context, often these factors are missing. Therefore, the notion of consent gets somewhat blurry.

Globally too, there are attempts to speak to the nature of this complexity. The UK has attempted messaging that likens consent to a cup of tea, based on the idea that you wouldn’t force someone to drink a cup of tea they didn’t want, just because you made it for them.

 

Back to the NFHS-5, where now 80 per cent of women participants believe that refusing sex to their husband is justified for any or all these reasons — if he has a sexually transmitted disease; he has sex with other women; or because she is tired/not in the mood. As many as 66 per cent of Indian men agree. And the percentage of adults who agree that women have a right to refuse sex to their husbands for all three reasons has increased by 12 per cent for women and three per cent of men from the last NHFS-4 (2015-16). This is progress.

The question is: will a law on marital rape be effective and address violence against women, or could it go the way of other laws passed over the last three decades — sex determination tests (to curb male child preference), sexual harassment in the workplace and the prevention of child sexual abuse — where women eventually end up bearing the brunt of speaking out, without satisfactory outcomes?

 

There is evidence that women often stay in violent relationships as they have nowhere to go and are afraid they will lose the roof over their heads and their children. Many are not economically independent and there are not enough systems in place for halfway houses or counselling for abused women.
The call for criminalisation of marital rape stems from a social movement, with collective agency. Here, the law is a first step. Multiple steps are needed to ensure that women have individual agency to be able to consent in sexual relationships in marriage.

 

Without the necessary complementary efforts in sex and sexuality education in the family, schools, institutions of higher learning, the workforce, the notion of consent to sex in marriage will be a pipe dream.



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